In recent years, the popularity of detergent products is forms other than granular/powder has increased. These other forms include liquids and tables.
Liquid laundry detergent products offer a number of advantages over dry, powdered or particulate laundry detergent products. Liquid laundry detergent products are readily measurable, speedily dissolved in wash water, non-dusting, are capable of being easily applied in concentrated solutions or dispersions to soiled areas on garments to be laundered and usually occupy less storage space than granular products. Additionally, liquid laundry detergents may have incorporated into their formulations materials which would deteriorate in the drying operations employed in the manufacture of particulate or granular laundry detergent products. Because liquid laundry detergents are usually considered to be more convenient to use than granular laundry detergents, they have found substantial favor with consumers.
Despite the advantages of liquid detergent compositions, granular products retain numerous advantages. These advantages include performance, formulation capability, lower-cost packaging and higher product stability. The advantages of product stability and formulation capability are derived in large from the nature granular admixtures where components can be individually stabilized and isolated into particles before being admixed with other particles. This physical separation in the final detergent composition allows the use of materials that are potentially unstable in a composition such as bleaches, enzymes, etc.
It is well-known to make detergent compositions in tablet form by compacting a granular detergent composition. Such tablets offer the convenience to consumers of pre-measured detergent dosage without the inconvenience and untidiness of measuring a sufficient amount of a granular detergent composition for each wash. Such products also offer considerable convenience to those consumers who launder the clothes outside or away from their residence (e.g. at a laundromat) because the consumer is required to transport only precisely as much laundry detergent as she or he needs for clothes laundering. Detergent compositions may be made in tablet form by compacting detergent particulates.
A disadvantage with conventional liquid detergent compositions has been compatibility of ingredients. Laundry detergent components which may be compatible with each other in granular and/or tablet products, may tend to interact or react with each other in a liquid, especially in an aqueous liquid environment.
A disadvantage with conventional granular/powder detergent compositions has been relatively poor dissolution, dispersion and solubility performance.
A disadvantage with conventional tablet detergent compositions has been the conflict between making the tablets sufficiently strong and durable to avoid breaking apart during manufacture, transportation and/or storage, while at the same time making the tablets in a manner such that the tablets rapidly disintegrate upon contact with wash water.
Given the foregoing, there is a continuing need to provide/formulate liquid detergent compositions which have not only excellent cleaning performance and compositional and physical stability but which also have a viscosity, dilution profile and dissolution behavior that render them useful and convenient for use as a liquid laundry detergent composition; there is a continuing need to provide/formulate granular/powder detergent compositions which have improved dissolution, dispersion and solubility performance while maintaining the granular/powder detergent's inherent formulation flexibility; and there is a continuing need to provide/formulate tablet detergent compositions which are both strong and durable to resist breakage during manufacture, transportation and/or storage, and which also disintegrate rapidly upon contact with wash water so that the components of the tablet can provide detersive benefits during the wash process.